What is the best way to administer Dovecot?

[sepoto]

I just did a basic installation of SquirrelMail which consists of:

Apache Server
PHP 5.3
Dovecot
SquirrelMail

I did NOT yet install:

PostFix

I fired up the front end to SquirrelMail and I see the front end. I'm reading from SquirrelMail the all administration of email accounts should be done I'm guessing either through Dovecot or Postfix (Maybe both even). Right now of course there is only DoveCot to worry about. Does anyone know of any good front ends for DoveCot? What would be the simplest way to create a test account to log in through SquirrelMail

Thank You!

[stevea]

Go ahead and install dovecot and postfix and configure them.

Not sure what you mean "front end" for dovecot. You just add your configs and start it.
Dovecot of course reads mails from maildir or mbox formats storage and serves it via pop3, imap, pop3s, and imaps.

Your first design decision is whether you want to to us mbox or maildir.

Here is a real quick setup note for postfix+dovecot.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...8&postcount=12

The example uses maildirs (not mbox). You'll want to tweak the domain name, ISP smtp destination, IP address ranges.
You'll need to open ports 25 for SMTP and 993 for IMAPS.

That example postfix stores emails at
home_mailbox = .Maildir/
meaning in ~/.Maildir/

The Dovecot config is to set up an SSL cert, and a single tiny file added to /etc/dovecot/conf.d/11-local-mail.conf containing:
mail_location=maildir:/home/%u/.Maildir



Afte you've done that then you can sent trivial emails to postfix from the postfix server like .....
mail -S "the subject" sepoto@localhost
this is the text
.
(the final period tels mail the msg body is complete),


Postfix should sent the msg to ~sepato/.Maildir/new/some-aweful-name,sb (I'm assuming you have an account at /home/sepato)
You should be able to connect to dovecot with a goo mail client (thunderbird, evolution) on port 993. You'll have to configure it for imaps (s for ssl) and to use normal password authentication.
When you connect you'll have to tell it to accept the self-signed cert permanently. Then use your password on the server.
Then you should see the email msg via dovecot.

I haven't configured squirrelmail in a long time - but it's the same idea - it needs to connect to the dovecot port 993, and except the home-mae cert, enter the use passwd.

[sepoto]

Thank you for the reply. I will be using this thread as my reference as I proceed!

[William Haller]

It would also be worth considering whether you are setting up just a few accounts or if this is for a company. If the latter, you might also consider a 389 dirsrv or other ldap based user administration configuration rather than individual accounts, along with virtual user directories in postfix/dovecot.

If the former, life is much simpler for configuration as you can use normal system users.

[Doug G]

If you have a vm or stand-alone machine you can do a fresh install on, I recommend using ispconfig3 which builds a nice mail server using postfix/dovecot and an administration application. There is a learning curve but the end result is worth it imho.

[sepoto]

What I ended up with at then end of my first installation is a system that runs off of PostFix and Dovecot with Webmin as an administrators panel. The SquirrelMail is just an add on that pipes into a good installation of Postfix w/ Dovecot. I followed a few guides along the way and opened all the proper firewall ports i.e. 443 993 25 80 143 10000. I also did a yum install mod_ssl which did not hurt anything either.